Underkill

The New York Times weighs in on the Zumbo affair with their typical sleight of mind:

“Assault rifle” is a much touchier term. It is generally understood to be the kind of gun that soldiers use in wars and terrorists use on the evening news. But the gun lobby despises “assault rifle,” considering it a false, scary label tacked onto perfectly legitimate weapons by people who want to take away others’ rights.

That is a debate for another day.

There's no debate about it. Straight from ther head of the Violence Policy Center:

The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

The Times goes on to perform a sin of omission:

“Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist,” he wrote, “but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity.” He added: “To most of the public, an assault rifle is a terrifying thing. Let’s divorce ourselves from them. I say game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods.”

Until he wrote that, Mr. Zumbo was one of the most admired hunters in America...

It seems our integrity-saturated Times editorialist failed to mention the most inflammatory declaration Mr. Zumbo made:

I'll go so far as to call them "terrorist" rifles.

So after dismissing the designed confusion over firearm functionality created and exploited by their allies, and intentionally withholding Zumbo's most offensive statement from their readers, The Times goes on with this accusation:

The paranoia and gloating that Mr. Zumbo’s name has evoked on gun discussion boards like ar15.com and freerepublic.com speak for themselves.

For The New York Times, which has consistently fear-mongered over private gun ownership to call anyone else paranoid takes a lot of damn gall. But just for the record, yes, a gun ban here, a gun ban there, and a pattern for an agenda does emerge, and it's not all that hard to find the master plan--straight from "The Newspaper of Record's" co-conpirators.

[Via Tom M]